


New Again

by mousemind



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Alternating Timelines, M/M, brief mentions of Jared's sad childhood, eternal sunshine au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 08:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5862688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousemind/pseuds/mousemind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm sorry if this is strange," Jared says, standing just in front of the doorway, eyes scanning the room. "But I feel like I've been here."</p><p>"In my.... room?" Richard clarifies, sidling up beside him. Jared nods slowly, an expression on his face that Richard can't parse, something that looks focused and distant but not unhappy.</p><p>"Gosh. Sorry. That was strange," Jared exhales apologetically. </p><p>"It's okay," Richard replies. Their arms are touching. It doesn't feel unusual at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Again

**Author's Note:**

> With sincerest thanks to [genyys](http://archiveofourown.org/users/genyys/pseuds/genyys), who is more helpful and encouraging than any person has any right to be, and has strong opinions on CD collections from the mid-nineties.

Erlich slams the door in the man's face. Richard can see, out of the small, decorative window, how he walks slowly back to his car with barely a look back over his shoulder. Something tightens in Richard's chest, like he's suddenly forgotten how to breathe. It feels more profound than just pity, or guilt. He feels like he's watching Jared walk away forever.  
  
"Jesus, Erlich," Richard snaps. "You didn't have to do that."  
  
Erlich yanks Richard's arm, pulling him away from the door.  
  
"Listen, Richie," he chastises. "You don't get it. You're successful now, and creeps like that can smell it on you."  
  
"He wasn't a creep. He just said he wanted to join the company."  
  
"Which he will not," Erlich demands. Richard huffs, shoves his hands into his pockets. He starts out of the room, but Erlich catches him by the upper arm and turns him around.  
  
"Hey," Richard yelps, but Erlich holds him, hard, unusually grave.  
  
"I'm really fucking serious," Erlich growls. "He can't. He won't."  
  
Something overcomes Richard, like he'd like to summon up all his courage and curse at Erlich, like it'd be the right thing to storm out and follow Jared out to his car and drag him back into the house. But instead Richard hisses and shakes himself out of Erlich's grasp, retreating to his room and locking the door.  
  
Hours later, at the end of his rope, Richard scrolls through his "recent numbers" and hovers over Jared's.  
  
If he calls, there'll be hell to pay with Erlich. Maybe he'll get kicked out. That'd be in line with his usual string of shit luck.  
  
If he doesn't call, though...  
  
The phone rings twice before Jared picks up. He sounds a bit surprised, but clicks into efficient, polite business-mode as Richard stutteringly explains his situation.  
  
"You know, it's probably best if I come by," Jared eventually says. "Unless that'd put you out, somehow."  
  
"No, no, please. Um. Come."  
  
Richard is smiling. He doesn't fully understand why.  
  
When Jared arrives, he lets him in and explains that they need to be quiet. Jared nods enthusiastically. He's brought back the champagne, which makes Richard laugh despite himself. He leads Jared to his room and shuts the door behind them. It's all so easy, so comfortable.  
  
"I'm sorry if this is strange," Jared says, standing just in front of the doorway, eyes scanning the room. "But I feel like I've been here."  
  
"In my.... room?" Richard clarifies, sidling up beside him. Jared nods slowly, an expression on his face that Richard can't parse, something that looks focused and distant but not unhappy.  
  
"Gosh. Sorry. That was strange," Jared exhales apologetically.  
  
"It's okay," Richard rejoins. Their arms are touching. It doesn't feel unusual at all.  
  
"Let's get to work," Jared chirps, so positive. Richard pulls out a chair for Jared and they work all night.

\-----

"You understand that the procedure can't be undone," the doctor warns.  
  
"Yes," Jared rasps. His voice is tight and crackly from crying. It's strange, he thinks. He doesn't often cry, and if he does, he can usually catch himself before he goes too far, finds himself in some terrible, dark chasm. But he's crying now, even as he speaks. He vaguely wonders if he'll ever stop.  
  
"We're happy to see it through," the man explains. "We can do it today."  
  
"Please. Today. Now."  
  
"And you aren't being coerced?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Is this something your partner is aware you're doing?"  
  
"I... I don't know," Jared stammers. "He's already had his memory wiped."  
  
Some ugly, choked sound gets caught in Jared's throat. He swipes his hands across his cheeks for what feels like the thousandth time, but they always come away wet.  
  
"Mr. Dunn, before we proceed, can you tell me what it is that makes you think it's best to forget your partner altogether? That is to say, why is it better for you to forget than move on? In this instance, you'll forfeit all relationship; friendly, healthy, or otherwise."  
  
Jared nods, fisting his hands in his pants.  
  
"I know. I just know that without Richard, I won't be able to."  
  
"To what," the doctor cautiously follows.  
  
"To anything," Jared concludes, weakly.  
  
They give Jared a pill. It'll make him sleep. It won't take effect right away, a friendly technician explains, slipping a pillow under Jared's head. But while they wait, it's encouraged that Jared list why he wants to forget. What it is about his partner that makes this the right decision.  
  
"He's so frightened," Jared croaks. "Sometimes he seems even frightened of me."  
  
He feels tears rolling down the slope of his cheeks, getting caught in his hair and ears and splattering with a soft _pat_ on the pillow beside him.  
  
"And he always doubted himself. He shouldn't have. He's so brilliant. He always knew what to do."  
  
He starts to feel so tired. So, profoundly tired.  
  
"I always loved him more," Jared manages, as he closes his eyes. "We both knew. We both always knew I loved him too much."  
  
When he wakes up, they hand him a bottle of water and some painkillers to take home. Jared feels oddly listless, starts driving home in the wrong direction and has to redirect himself to his small, sparse apartment.   
  
On his kitchen counter is his Hooli ID on a lanyard. He's proud of his new job. Hooli feels like the sort of place he should have been working all along. It stirs up an unease in him - he feels on edge like he could argue that fact at the drop of a hat. Beside the ID are two keys on a green carabiner. He has no idea what they could possibly be for, so he slides them into a desk drawer and forgets about it.  
  
His TV says he is in the middle of an episode of _The X Files_. He can't recall ever watching this show, but finishes the episode, anyway. It feels right, somehow. He sleeps peacefully in his bed that night, alone.

\-----

"Whose Chevy Volt is that out front?"  
  
Richard looks up from his mug of coffee. Swallows hard.  
  
"Um. Jared Dunn's."  
  
Something stricken flashes across Erlich's face, something not just angry, but shocked, upset.  
  
"What the fuck did I say," he seethes, his hands grasping hard at the air, like wringing out something invisible between them. "Richie. What. The fuck. DId I say to you?"  
  
"No, I heard you," Richard snaps. "I just don't give a shit."  
  
"You're making a huge mistake," Erlich groans, under his breath. But he makes no move to follow Richard out of the kitchen.

\-----

"Erased? What does that mean, erased?"  
  
"It means he's not gonna remember you Jared. None of it. None of you."  
  
Jared shakes his head.  
  
"This is some mean joke. You're mad at me. You're mad because I've upset Richard."  
  
"Jared," Erlich starts.  
  
"No, I understand," Jared continues over him, raising his hands in something like a gesture of surrender. "But to lie to me like this is cruel, Erlich."  
  
"It's not a lie," Erlich grunts emphatically, and it isn't until he slams a pamphlet down on the table between them that Jared stops his nervous, unhappy chatter. Jared turns it over in his hands with a sick, frightened reverence.  
  
"Really," Jared chokes, hardly a question at all.  
  
"Yeah." Erlich is cool, but not indifferent. "Jared. Yeah."  
  
It takes every last modicum of strength, of the well-practiced denial of devastation that Jared is so familiar with, for him to look Erlich in the eye and ask,  
  
"When is he getting it done? I have to - to tell him. To tell him he can't."  
  
Erlich looks at his hands, splayed out in front of him on the table.  
  
"It's done, Jared." Erlich doesn't look up. "He had the procedure done yesterday."  
  
Jared remembers a particularly vicious kid in one of his group homes who'd held Jared's head under water for too long. It was some desperate act of aggression, some tenuous grasp for control - even Jared could see that, at the time - but Jared had been a quiet, easy target, and they were so rarely supervised. Jared remembers the paralyzing inability to breathe, how panic had subsided, strangely, into a hollow acceptance. And that once he was pulled out, gasping, his ears rang for what felt like hours.  
  
It's that same ringing now, he notes, distantly. He can't hear a thing.  
  
"Bud, you gotta get up," is all he hears, as he slowly reorients himself. He's in a coffee shop. Erlich has him by the shoulders, firmly, barely keeping him in his chair. People are staring.  
  
"Jared," Erlich snaps, cutting through the head-splitting buzz that feels stuck just behind his eyes. "Jared. Say something."

\-----

Erlich corners Jared when they return from the Raviga offices.

"I wish I could've seen it," Jared chirps in an impossibly happy, almost dreamy way. "You really impressed Peter Gregory. I can tell."

Jared makes a polite sound like, "whoops!" as Erlich steps in front of him, pushing him back into the room with one broad, firm hand. Jared smiles back in an almost bemused way, which makes Erlich all the more irate.

"Cut the shit," Erlich commands, jabbing one finger into Jared's sternum. "What do you want?"

Jared blinks back at him, bewildered.

"To see Pied Piper succeed. Isn't that what we all want?"

"No," Erlich clarifies, his voice softer, but with an edge that suddenly frightens Jared a little, really reminds him of more vicious people he's known. "With Richard. What do you want from Richard?"

"To see him succeed," Jared says again, and he means it. He swallows hard. It isn't Erlich's right to know that he finds Richard so wonderful. So smart, and brave, and strangely charming in his idiosyncrasies and twitches and --

That's Jared's secret. And that's what it is meant to be. A secret.

"Nothing more," Jared concludes. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find dry pants."

\-----

"...like a fucking idiot, Jared," is all Jared hears, as Richard stomps into the other room and throws his bag down on the couch. Jared hovers nervously in the hallway, taking off his shoes almost instinctually. Jared's small apartment rarely feels like a home, so he tries to set familiar rules. He likes when Richard stays over, he especially likes that Richard often forgets his things. Sometimes, despite an urge to be tidy, he'll leave one of Richard's discarded hoodies draped over the back of a chair, just to know he can come home from an interminable day at work to a brief flash of Richard.

"It wasn't so bad, Richard," Jared consoles from the open doorway, watching Richard nervously pace, tracking indents into his pristine, tan carpet.

"I had to leave to throw up in the middle of the meeting," Richard snaps. He gestures sort of angrily, like some half-aborted shrug, as he turns on his heel. "How is that not bad?" 

"I simply outlined a potential go-to-market strategy for the investors while you were gone," Jared placates. "It was hardly noticeable, and we  - "

"Stop, _stop_ ," Richard nearly shouts, plowing over Jared's assurances. "I hate this." 

"Sorry?"

"I hate that you're lying to make me feel better. I hate that you might not be lying at all, and you actually think that went well! And Jared, really," Richard seethes, finally turning to face him head-on, "I hate that you made me go there at all." 

Jared feels his fingers go a bit numb. 

"Don't you want to take meetings? Get your tech off the ground?"

"Yes," Richard answers hastily, then, with a frustrated groan, "No. I don't know, Jared. I hate it."

He fumbles with the knot of the tie at his throat, trying to yank it looser, but mostly just succeeding in pulling it into a tight snag. 

"Let me do that for you," Jared says gently, trying to approach, flinching as Richard bats his hands away. 

"And just because I wear one of your old ties, doesn't mean they aren't going to see right through me," Richard continues, on a tear now. "They looked at me like... like... fuck, I don't know, Jared. I can't do it again. You made me go."

"Richard, I wouldn't ever force you into anything," Jared intones, trying to be calm. Calm for Richard. Calm for his own sake, the slowly-building panic making him feel claustrophobic. "But this is how we see you succeed. You take meetings. We leverage your bids."

Richard laughs that off, in a dismissive, angry way. He manages to get the tie undone and tosses it to the floor. 

"Be reasonable, Richard. You don't want to be at Hooli your whole life." 

Richard snaps around, hands fisted at the hem of his jacket. Jared had asked him to wear it, citing how lovely Richard looked in his suit. He'd spend twenty minutes in the company bathroom trying to wash the vomit off the right sleeve before driving a trembling Richard home. 

"Oh, yeah?" he challenges, advancing on him. "What about you? Two promotions in, and your boss still doesn't know your real name? Christ, Jared! You're miserable, you work so much I hardly see you anymore, and you hate who are there!"

"It's different, Richard, you know that," Jared placates. "I'm not like you."

Richard narrows his eyes, challenges,

"What's _'like me?'_ What does that mean?"

"Brilliant!" Jared defends. "I don't -- I mean, the skill you have. The ability to make something. Richard, if I could do what you can, I'd have - " 

Richard looks at him expectantly, waiting for Jared to finish his thought.

"I don't know," Jared concludes, looking away. "I certainly wouldn't be at Hooli." 

"Jesus, Jared," Richard exhales. He softens, minimally, his voice lowering, his shoulders slack.

"I'm not - " Richard starts, then bites his lip. Reconsiders his words. "I'm not gonna be the head of some company."

"You could be," Jared defends, and that hopefulness just feels taunting, useless now in Richard's ears.  

Jared is just that kind of person, Richard reasons. He wants to see the best, even when there's nothing at all to see. Even if that means conjuring up what isn't there; that Richard is some sort of leader, or pioneer, that Richard is even the kind of man that could take your hand and look you in the eye. Jared sees in him a person that Richard doesn't recognize. And that, in itself, frightens him. 

"You can't expect that from me," Richard sighs, setting himself down on the couch. He suddenly feels impossibly tired.

"You're a genius," Jared proffers, like a raft in a storm, like some small, last-ditch effort at salvation.

Richard barks out a sharp rasp, something that might be laughter but choked and ugly. It disturbs Jared, it really does, in some repressed, reactionary part of himself.  

"No, Jared," he says in such a dry, measured way, it's like someone else's voice coming out of Richard's tightly-wound body. "You just wish I were."

\-----

"You don't have to stay up," Richard says, sliding his headphones off his ears. Jared is just beside him at the work table, the rest of the hostel in bed hours ago. TechCrunch looms, soon, in the future and Richard doesn't sleep much anymore. Jared looks up from his tablet, vaguely surprised.

"Um, with me, I mean," Richard concludes. 

"Oh," Jared says, and it's so -- Richard doesn't have a word for it. Genuine, maybe. Or, sweet. The round, soft tone of his voice. The almost permanent downturn of his lips, despite his effusive nature. "Richard, actually I quite like keeping you company."

Richard smiles, sort of despite himself.

"Don't expect too much conversation," Richard remarks, vaguely gesturing to his computer screen.

"I don't mind at all," Jared answers. And then, with a sudden frown, "Unless you do. Don't be polite. I can leave you alone." 

"No," Richard insists. "It's, um. Kinda nice."

There's a beat of silence, Jared smiling at him for a moment too long, Richard turned away but feeling the warmth, the intensity, of Jared's affection on his skin like sunshine. 

"I don't know what it is," Richard says, feeling bold. "But sometimes, when we're together, it's like. I don't know. Like I don't have to say anything for you to know what I'm thinking."

Jared looks surprised, but hardly put-off.

"Yes, Richard," he exhales. "I feel very much the same."

He puts down his tablet and fixes Richard with a look Richard can't quite parse - his lips tight, pinched, but his eyes wide, almost desperate, searching Richard's face for some sort of answer to a question that hasn't been posed yet.

"Lucky," is what Jared finally states. "That's what I feel when I'm with you."

Richard leans in, and Jared doesn't pull away.

"Yeah," is all Richard can say, suddenly very focused on the jut of Jared's jaw, the way his mouth falls open when he's anxious.

"You're incredible," Jared says, his voice barely audible. "I often can't believe it. I really think you're a genius." 

Richard huffs out all the air in his chest. His head is light. God, they're close. He can feel Jared's breath on his cheek in short, nervous puffs.

"Really," Jared insists, and he closes the distance, kisses Richard gently. He kisses in a way that feels almost practiced, like he'd calculated exactly the way Richard liked it, the softness, the gentle insistence, the slow swipe of his tongue at his bottom lip as he pulls away. It feels shocking. It feels inevitable. Richard lets out a sound like a groan that comes from somewhere deep inside him, a noise that doesn't sound entirely human. Jared looks unnaturally placid, unperturbed, as he pushes hair away from Richard's forehead with a reverent gentleness.

"You're my boss," Jared says, but without any sort of anxiousness.

"You made the rules," Richard teases. "Just rewrite them." 

There are a lot of things Richard would rewrite, if he could. To start, not kissing Jared sooner. That is, at least, the last fully formed thought he can muster as Jared pulls him into bed, starts touching him in a way that feels like Jared knows every desire Richard has before they even occur to him.

\-----

"Sorry, but do you need help?"

The man on his knees in the hallway makes a noise like a surprised yelp and ducks his head, still digging through a ratty-looking backpack, papers and folders and old paystubs strewn all around it. 

"Nope, I'm good. I'm. Good. All good, thanks for asking."

"You're sort of in the middle of the floor," Jared states observationally. He slowly lowers himself down beside the young man, who makes a barely-concealed effort to turn his face even further away. Jared wonders if he should take this as a hint, or maybe have the gall to be a bit offended, but there's something about this man - some aura around him akin to a kick-me sign tacked to his back - that Jared both recognizes and pities.

"Did you lose something?" Jared asks, taking stock of what litters the floor all around them. Some are old Hooli memos, some take-home materials from company-wide meetings, but most are handwritten scribbles; things torn out of legal pads or scratched onto the back of a post-it. 

"No, I," and he exhales, scrubs his hands over his flushed face with an audible groan. "I think they took something."

"They?" Jared inquires. And then, with a realization, "Wait. _Took?_ " 

"Look, it really doesn't matter," the man huffs, and he finally looks at Jared with such a tired, weary expression. There's something sad and exhausted in the set of his brow, in his thin frown. 

"I hate to be contrary, but I think it does." Jared explains carefully. "If you suspect people are stealing from you, we should head to HR to report it right away."

"It's just dumb notes and shit. Ideas." He starts haphazardly shoving the mess into his backpack. "They just want to make fun of me. It's stupid, don't waste your time."

"Please, if you'd just tell me who - " Jared begins, using his best mediator voice. The voice he'd practiced and perfected as an RA in college, at his last job delivering bad news - even before then, when he had to lie to the social service case workers and convince them he was just fine. But as the words leave his mouth, the other man barks a high-pitched, angry laugh.

"Hooli's best and brightest!" he almost squawks, zipping up his backpack with a defensive finality. He softens, just minimally, as he concludes, "What does it fucking matter?" 

He stands, slinging the backpack up onto one of his bony shoulders. Jared looks up at him, taken aback by the sudden shift in perspective, in status. There's an apologetic tension in his posture; the nervous way he shifts his feet, clenches and unclenches his fist around the strap of his backpack.

"Thanks for the help," the man says, not sarcastically, and he turns to go. Jared quickly stands. 

"Wait," Jared calls. The man turns around.

"I'm sorry this has happened to you. I'm sorry that it seems to be a repeat offense. I respect your decision not to report it, but I want to at least extend some sympathy."

The man blinks back at him like Jared had just confessed to being from another planet: surprised, a bit scandalized, and just vaguely - noticeably - amused. 

"Thanks," he says, in a small voice.

Jared approaches and extends a hand. 

"Jared Dunn," he introduces, with a familiar swell of professional adroitness. The man shakes his hand in return, and almost chuckles,

"Yeah, I know who you are."

Jared is genuinely taken aback, tries unsuccessfully to hide it on his face. There's something embarrassing about it, but not wholly unflattering.

"Sorry?"

"I remember Gavin Belson introducing you as a new hire at one of those company-wide meetings. You seemed nervous."

"I was," Jared answers, instantaneously, hardly even clocking Richard's strange, adept statement of an embarrassing truth.

"I'm Richard," he answers, and he smiles. It's small, but it's there. And it's _lovely_ , Jared thinks, before he can catch himself.

"Richard," Jared repeats. It's a business technique - a way to memorize names, a way to make the person feel heard and acknowledged - but the way the name sounds coming out of Jared's mouth suddenly feels less like strategy and more like sharing a wonderful secret. "So, what do you do?"

"Nothing," Richard answers, with a scoff. "Well. Not nothing. Bottom of the totem pole, bullshit work. Nothing important, like you." 

Jared feels himself go red, can tell that embarrassing, telling flush has spread from his cheeks all the way into his ears. It's a hot, prickly sensation that's not wholly unlikable. 

"I'm not important," Jared counters, almost defensively. 

"Tell that to the jumbotron at a meeting literally hundreds of people attended," Richard drawls. He means it innocently - just a joke, a well-meaning jibe - but something about acknowledging all that attention makes Jared feel mortified, feel almost dizzy at the thought, so he blurts out,

"Jared's not even my name."

Richard opens his mouth, and shuts it again just as quickly. He looks like he's processing a thousand questions, which are all fighting for the one train of thought that can actually leave his mouth.

"W-what?" is what Richard eventually stutters, with visible effort.

"I mean, it is. Here. Now."

Richard still looks utterly perplexed, though not uninterested.

"He. It's. My name is Donald. Gavin must've -- I don't know. He announced me, at that meeting. As Jared."

"And you didn't correct him?"

Jared shrugs, a bit. "Names stick."

Richard laughs a little, completed bowled over with disbelief.

"You're not going to correct him, are you?"

As an answer, Jared lifts his Hooli ID from the lanyard strung around his neck.

"I had them reprint me a new ID card and everything. See? Jared Dunn."

Richard leans in, squints at the printed lettering. As he does so, Jared gets the briefest glimpse of Richard's neck, his clavicle, as his collared shirt dips away from his chest. Something needy and insistent alights in Jared's gut, which he fights to tamp down immediately.

"Jared Dunn," Richard repeats, and it makes Jared feel wonderful just to hear him say it. "I'll see you around."

Jared waves as Richard leaves. He doesn't look back over his shoulder, which Jared sort of foolishly hoped he would. In a voice so quiet, Jared himself can hardly hear it, he replies, 

"See you around."

\-----

Richard swings his legs nervously off the side of the uncomfortable examination table in his doctor's office, letting the rubber heels of his sneakers kick back into the metal with a dull _thud-thud_. The repetitive sound is calming, in a way. Grounding.

"Um," Richard manages, past the knot in his throat. "The panic attacks are just, getting worse now? They last longer and I really feel, um, pretty awful."

"And how are you sleeping," his doctor asks, looking over his chart on the front of a clipboard.

"Bad," Richard answers.

"Bad as in, fitful sleep? Or bad as in, not sleeping enough?" his doctor clarifies.

"Both."

His doctor clicks his tongue reproachfully.

"That's bad news, Richard. You could be looking at heart problems, hypertension... What seem like occasional panic attacks now can quickly become a panic disorder." Richard swallows, as his doctor cheerily concludes, "Did you know people with panic disorders are forty percent more likely to attempt suicide?"

"Nope," Richard falters, sucking in a nervous breath. "Don't. Uh. Please don't."

"Just a useful factoid," his doctor replies, maybe a bit defensively. "Is someone going to drive you home? I wouldn't recommend getting behind the wheel of a car right now."

"I'll take a cab," Richard answers, sliding off the table. 

"We can call your emergency contact, see if they'll pick you up," he says slowly, eyes scanning Richard's paperwork. "Jared Dunn?"

Richard stops, perplexed.

"Jared's my emergency contact?"

"That's what it says here."

Richard laughs a little despite himself, a sort of anxious, nauseated bubble in his stomach.

"He must have changed it. That's um, kinda fucked up," Richard fidgets nervously. He reaches a hand out for the clipboard. "Can I see that? I didn't think people could just, like, change someone else's emergency contact." 

"They can't," he rebuts firmly, handing Richard his file. "You would've had to approve it."

Richard scans the page for Jared's name, the beginnings of another panic attack just at the edges of his consciousness.

There it is. Jared's name, and two different phone numbers. Dated and signed December of two years ago.

"This has gotta be a mistake." Richard barely manages to string the words together into a complete sentence. His hands have gone numb, his tongue dry and heavy in his mouth. "I met Jared three months ago."

His doctor scowls at him.

"Are you feeling all right, Richard?"

Richard wants to snap, _yes, I'm fine, you're the one who's crazy here_ , but he's also very much not all right, which he vaguely realizes as his knees give out and he pitches, sideways, onto the floor.

\-----

"You could move in with me," Jared says into the darkness of the room, right to the white expanse of ceiling.

Richard turns over onto his side, squinting at Jared in the dim light. 

"Huh?"

Jared huffs a small laugh, doesn't look at Richard, seems nervously fixated on something far away.

"Sorry. Stupid." Jared apologizes, shaking his head.

"No, I. Um. Say that again?"

Jared closes his eyes.

"I said that, if you wanted, you could move in with me. Instead of living at the Incubator, with Erlich and all those new guys."

Richard feels a bit paralyzed, but not in a familiar way, not in that leaden way when he's on the verge of a panic attack, not in that frightened way when he sees something going wrong and feels powerless to end it. This is hazy. Dreamlike.

"Here?" Richard manages. 

"Yes," Jared says. He sounds a bit chagrined. "It was an unfair thing to ask. I'm sorry." 

Richard puts a hand on Jared's shoulder. He sleeps in a soft, white cotton t-shirt. Every night, a soft, white cotton t-shirt. Not the same one; he has many. All nicely pressed. All smelling like fabric softener. It's something Richard has never really taken a moment to catalogue, but now all he can think about his Jared and his white t-shirts, and how he suddenly wants to see Jared in them every night, for the rest of the foreseeable future.

"I'll see if I can break Erlich's lease," Richard says. "Bighead'll be mad at me."

Jared turns to look at him, and there are already tears in the corner of his eyes.

"Really," he asks, breathlessly. 

"Have you ever considered like, putting art up on the walls?" 

"We can do whatever you'd like," Jared replies gratefully, taking Richard's face in his hands and kissing him like it was their first time, all over again.

\-----

"Dude, you sound kinda... not great," Bighead says, his voice sort of hollow-sounding through the telephone connection. "Do I need to come over?" 

"No, no," Richard insists, quickly. "Just. Um. I have to ask you something crazy." 

"Okay." 

"And I'm really not crazy, Bighead."

"Okay."

"And if I am crazy, you need to tell me that."

"Yes, dude. Okay."

Richard sucks in air through his teeth, paces the length of the driveway yet again.

"Who is Jared?" Richard asks, at length, trying to quell the vicious wave of nausea that overcomes him.

Bighead pauses for just a little too long before he chuckles and answers,

"Jared works for you, man." 

"No. Listen. There's something --" Richard falters, unable to think of a word. "I don't know. Just... Jared. Who the fuck is Jared." 

"You know him better than I do. Uh, I gotta get back to work, there's a big Nucleus meeting that I need to - "

"Bighead," Richard whimpers. "C'mon. If I'm crazy - if this is nothing and you have no idea what I mean - tell me. But don't do this."

There's a long pause, Richard can almost sense his friend's discomfort over the phone, like he's twitching nervously beside him, wringing his hands.

"You erased him, man," Bighead says, at length. There's something sad and apologetic in his tone that sort of scares Richard. "You're not supposed to know that. It's like, bad for you. And shit." 

"I erased him?" 

"Yeah, like a year ago. You were about to move in with him, get real and stuff - "

"We dated?"

"Yeah, man. It was serious. Why else would you have erased him when it ended?"

"He broke up with me," Richard intones, sort of distantly. He can't imagine Jared mad. It feels like seeing Jared in a wonky fun-house mirror; Jared, but not quite, not really, some sort of vicious prank.

"Nah, Richard. You broke up with him."

\-----

"What do you mean, it just wasn't 'set right?' It was broken?"

"Oh. Yes. Two of them, actually." Jared says, his voice muffled for a moment as he slips on his pajama shirt. 

"How does someone just not set a broken rib the right way?"

"No, the doctor set it correctly, it just takes," he pauses, squints, like he's considering, "Well, you have to really take care of it after. Wrap it right, and stay inactive." 

"And?"

Jared sits beside him on the bed, his long legs dangling off the side.

"I didn't do that," Jared shrugs, easily. "I wasn't really able to, really. I mean, I was thirteen, and there were so many kids in the home." 

He says it with such a lack of judgement, of any sort of comment at all, it's like hearing Jared recap sad news headlines. 

Richard curses, pulls nervously at the bedspread beneath his nervous hands.

"Fuck, Jared. Sorry." 

"Why would you ever apologize," Jared asks, almost reverently. "Richard, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Something about that spectacularly kind comment presses on Richard's chest like a heavy weight. It's not quite dread, it's not quite pity. It's something akin to fear, essentially. Jared expects things of Richard that Richard knows he can never be.

"It's just that you say these things," Richard speaks, his breath uncomfortably shallow, like there's too little air in the room. "All these people who have hurt you..."

Jared peers back at him, looking just a bit frightened, like he's grappling with things no decent person should have to imagine. Jared folds in on himself, heavy with guilt. _Richard is sensitive_ , Jared thinks. _Richard shouldn't have to see this part of me_. 

But instead Richard concludes,

"I don't want to be one of those people. Who hurt you."

Jared exhales what feels like all of his breath in one sharp, relieved laugh.

"Oh," he is all he manages to say, taking Richard's face gently in his hands. He kisses his face everywhere that he can, lets his head drop to rest in the crook of Richard's neck.  

"Richard, you could never be," Jared assures at length, his breath hot on Richard's neck. "I can't wait until you live here with me. Has anyone ever been so lucky?"

Richard doesn't reply. He feels like he can't.

"You're going to be marvelous in your meeting tomorrow. Are you nervous?"

"Yes," Richard says, in an impossibly small voice.

"I'll be with you every step," Jared assures. He helps Richard lay back against the pillows. "You deserve so much success. I really think this app can get funding. I can't wait to see you get everything you've ever wanted." 

Richard asks, past a significant knot in his throat, 

"What you do you want?"

Jared lays beside him on the pillow with a pleased, genuine smile.

"This, really." 

\-----

 Jared is foolish.

He had felt, when he kissed Richard that night, like something he didn't know was missing had slotted, inevitably, into place. Being with him was somewhat like an impossible privilege and somewhat like deja vu, like touching him was visiting a place you felt you'd been but couldn't recall how. Richard had come apart so easily, so gently under his hands, had gasped yes, there, right there, in a way that wasn't just satisfied, but surprised, like it was better than anything he could have imagined.

Jared is foolish to have assumed that meant anything. Richard was stressed. Richard needed release. Richard was vulnerable and, really, Jared had preyed upon that because he likes the way Richard bites his nails or shrugs his shoulders or looks with his hair all mussed from sleep as he emerges from his room in the morning. He's foolish, and he's shameful, really. It's no wonder Richard has done his best to ignore him for the last few days.

Jared drafts a letter of resignation. He remembers TechCrunch is in just over a week. He saves the letter, for just after.

God, it'd been easy with Richard, though. So free of his usual nerves, his usual all-consuming desire to please that led people to call him desperate, to turn a little cruel. Richard had even lifted his hands away from Jared's wrists in that moment when he'd turned over and had Jared pinned, like he just knew that Jared couldn't abide it, like he knew he was sparing Jared some embarrassment and discomfort.

Jared has a way of romanticizing things, he reasons. It wasn't magic. He just wanted it to be. Richard hadn't wanted it to be. Richard isn't speaking to him anymore.

He drafts a second, more to-the-point resignation. Just in case things get incrementally worse. 

\-----

Erlich stirs at a mug of hot coffee lazily, scrolling through his phone, as Richard enters the kitchen. It's late, but that's to his advantage. Jared's gone home, back to wherever it is that Jared goes, and Gilfoyle and Dinesh in bed.

"You should be working," Erlich grunts, not looking up from his phone. 

"Yeah, you too," Richard snaps, entirely without a modicum of patience.

"Oh no, I am," he says warningly, "I'm reading up on whose asses we need to fuck sideways and into oblivion at TechCrunch next week."

Richard sits down at the small coffee table with him, and Erlich shoots him a surprised, almost offended look.

"I moved in two years ago," Richard says, not at all a question.

"Yeah, sure, I dunno." 

"No," Richard insists. "I moved in here two years ago. Tell me that's true." 

"Yeah, Richard, it's true," Erlich huffs impatiently. "What the fuck does that have to - "

"And when did I meet Jared?"

Erlich opens his mouth and snaps it shut in an instant. His eyes flash with just the briefest moment of panic. Of anger, too, perhaps.

"Go to sleep, Richard. You need it," he says, starting to push himself up out of his chair. Richard seizes his forearm desperately. 

"Stop. Sit down." 

Erlich shakes his arm away, hissing,

"Fuck you, Richie, let go of me."

"I know!" Richard barks. And Erlich stalls, which says more than words ever could. "I found out. At my doctor. It was an accident. So I called Bighead." Richard starts losing steam, the more impossible the thought seems leaving his mouth. "He said he wasn't supposed to tell me." 

"Tell you what," Erlich posits, in a last ditch effort to throw Richard off the trail, but something in his face gives away that he knows it's too far gone.

"Erlich," Richard chokes, pleadingly. "Just tell me if it's true." 

Erlich sighs, is overcome with such a somber, ponderous look that Richard feels like he barely recognizes him.

"Hold on," Erlich says, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket. He scrolls through it for a little too long, like he's not exactly sure where he's meant to be looking. Richard feels paralyzed, fraught with fear and relief in conflicting waves, and just patiently waits until Erlich presents his phone to him. 

There, on the screen, is a photo of Jared and Richard that Richard certainly doesn't remember taking. Jared sits beside Richard on a couch he doesn't recognize, one hand in Richard's lap. Richard has Jared's hand cradled in both of his own, and isn't quite looking at the camera. He's smiling, bashfully, eyes downcast but not closed. But Jared is looking right into camera, looking caught somewhere between surprise and elation.  

"They said we should destroy everything of you two," Erlich says, surprisingly calm. "I just never got around to this one."

"Why not," Richard asks, unable to tear himself away from the photo. Jared looks younger. Happier, too.

"I dunno," Erlich answers with a shrug. He looks a bit chagrined, or maybe just uncommonly emotional. He takes back his phone and Richard feels one hot, embarrassing tear streak down his cheek and splatter onto the table in front of him.

"Now what?" Richard asks, as his breath hitches.

\-----

"I'll be right out here the whole time, bud," Erlich says, turning off the car engine.

"Okay," Richard drawls, feeling a thousand miles away. 

"Do you need me to walk you in?" 

"No, I'm - " Richard stops, realizes he's about to say _'good'_ and feels too nauseous to think anymore. 

"Hey," Erlich speaks into the horrendous silence, uncommonly gentle and soft. "I'll take care of the... after. You just get in there and get your treatment done. It'll be over before you know."

"Jared can survive anything," Richard says, and maybe it sounds like something selfish, something meant to imply that this won't hurt Jared profoundly. Jared, who has been nothing but hurt for so many years. But Richard knows what he means: that Richard can't go on without Jared, but Jared will bounce back. He always has.

Erlich is kind. He actually walks Richard to the door. He drives him home later, too, takes care when he is disoriented and tired for days after. He knows Richard is recovered when he catches him in the hallway on the phone rolling his eyes like a petulant teenager. 

"Yeah, I'm fine, Mom. I dunno, I guess I was a little under the weather, or something," he groans into the receiver. "You've called like, three times this week."

There's a pause.

"Yeah, there are people around all the time. Why would you ask that?"

\-----

Jared looks up from the photo.

"It's true," he exhales. "What you're saying."

"Yes," Richard assures with as much confidence as he can muster, given that he hardly believes it himself. 

"That's my couch we're sitting on," Jared says. "In the picture."

"Oh," is all Richard can say, somewhat hollowly.

Jared laughs, which startles Richard a bit.

"This is so strange," he muses, looking up and away from Richard, sort of marveling at the room around them. "What you're saying is impossible."

"I know," Richard assures. 

"But I don't feel surprised at all," Jared rejoinders, quickly. He looks back at Richard, oddly placid. He smiles. "It was so easy." 

Richard swallows. "What was?"

"Everything," Jared muses, a delight apparent in his voice, almost impossible to mask. "Working with you. Knowing you. Touching you. It all was so -- Richard, I'm usually not good at that."

"No, Jared, me neither," Richard exclaims, all but leaping to reply.

"But wasn't it easy?" Jared asks, and he sounds so hopeful. It makes Richard ache, somewhere in his chest. Richard hardly remembers how to speak, is astonished when he can even manage to answer,  

"Yes."

Jared steps closer, like he means to kiss Richard - maybe he wants to and thinks better of it - but he stops, so close to him, close enough that Richard can smell some nice fabric softener and unwittingly thinks "white cotton t-shirts" and doesn't fully understand why. 

"Richard, I'm a bit frightened," Jared whispers. "It must've been terrible, what happened to us."

"I erased you," Richard says, hearing himself confess it aloud for the first time. It feels sickening. Guilty. Secret, in the worst, most difficult way.

"Or, who knows. Maybe I erased you, and you followed suit."

"Erlich would know," Richard supplies. "If you think we should find out."

"I don't," Jared quickly insists. He looks at the photo again, which Richard had printed. Something about seeing them both caught in such a genuine, tender moment so long ago feels almost inappropriate, like catching a furtive glance of someone else's life and aching for it.

"I apologize for what I must've done to you," Jared says, focusing on the relaxed, happy look on then-Richard's face. Now-Richard is so stressed. Now-Richard vomits anxiously in Sand Hill bathrooms, and hardly sleeps. What did he do back then that changed this man so profoundly, Jared wonders. What deep, incurable hurt did he dole out? 

"God, Jared," Richard chastises, but not angrily. "Don't - I mean - you don't know. It could've been me."

He chuckles almost bitterly, shoves his hands in his pockets. 

"When I hear myself say it - that I almost moved in with you, that we were good together, and worked together, and it was, you know, real? I almost can't believe we're talking about me." 

Jared raises his eyebrows, all concern and unintrusive care. 

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know how to be that person, Jared. I can't imagine I was ever good to you." 

Jared touches his shoulder, the gentle pressure so grounding, almost uncommonly so. Richard thinks about how well Jared comforted him at Raviga when he should have, by all means, spun out beyond belief.  

"When I saw you, that day when you turned down Gavin Belson's offer, something in me said - insisted, really - that I follow you. That it was the right thing to do. Richard, it was... I don't know. I don't think I was wrong. Not this time, and not last time, either." 

Richard exhales, tugs anxiously at the hair just above his right ear. Kindly, gingerly, Jared takes Richard's land and lowers it.

"Don't hurt yourself," Jared warns, just as Richard blurts out over him,

"It could happen again." A pause, as he watches Jared's face fall. "The day we realize we're not actually right for each other. That we're unhappy."

Jared looks like he might say something, might be summoning some bravery to reject that, but instead he looks right at Richard with a thoughtful squint that wrinkles his nose and asks,

"Did you used to forget your clothes at my apartment all the time?"

"I don't know," Richard answers, truthfully. 

"I would love it if you did. What a nice thing to come home to." 

Jared puts a cool, dry hand on the back of Richard's neck. Richard briefly thinks it is the nicest thing he's ever felt, that every moment they haven't been this close in exactly this position has been a waste, somehow.

"I'm going to disappoint you," Richard says, in a voice that doesn't even sound like his own. "You'll hate me. You have, before."

"No," Jared insists. "Just - "

His sentence ends there, as Jared pulls him into a tight embrace. Richard grips back like it's the last moment of existence, like the closer he can hold Jared the longer he can postpone some inevitable, frightening pain. What Jared doesn't say is, _don't leave_. He doesn't need to. Richard knows. Richard, perhaps, has always known.

-

Richard does move in, eventually. He has a a list, ready at the tip of his tongue, of everything Jared will come to resent about him. Though he's better at hiding it, Jared has the same.

Richard does move in, though. 

It takes a year, and a great deal of polite insistence that they understand what they're doing (that's Jared's wheelhouse, really), but they request their packets from the treatment center. Richard frowns at the papers in his hands, crumpling the manilla envelope unwittingly. 

"I said you were pushy. Insistent that I do things to better myself, even if I didn't want to." Richard says, clearly strained and a bit mortified. He looks up at Jared, who is looking back sort of impassively. Richard's heart sinks as he hurries to add, "That doesn't seem right."

"No," Jared replies, so calm. "I can be that way. I think so highly of you."

"You read one," Richard entreats.

Jared clears his throat, like this is a business debriefing.

"The only thing Richard fears more than failure is change," Jared reads. His voice catches on the next line. "I don't know how to make him happy. I've always suspected I loved him too much. Much more than he loves me."

Richard puts his papers down on the table. _Their_ table, in their kitchen, in the home they keep.

"This is stupid," Richard declares. "I don't want --"

Jared looks resigned, downtrodden, as he also places his file on the table, face-down.

"That isn't true," he says, with an uncommon finality, decisiveness.

"Then, or now?" Jared asks, genuinely a bit frightened of the answer.

"Both. Fuck. It doesn't matter," Richard stammers pleadingly. "I love you." 

Jared puts his hand on top of Richard's on the table. Some things still feel so shockingly _new_ , after all this time. They throw away the files for good, and sink, gratefully, into the bed they share.


End file.
